"I Leaned on God, and was safe." In the paragraph from which this quotation is taken (Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 15) Mary Baker Eddy relates that even though her life was threatened, she neither informed the police nor appealed to the laws of the land for protection. She turned entirely away from the belief that her safety lay with persons or material organizations. Her faith in God's presence and availability was her protection.
To lean on God and not on persons is a lesson which mortals are exceedingly reluctant to learn. It seems so much easier to look to some person for help. On all sides we see evidence of a growing desire to look to something other than God to take care of us, a subtle tendency which should be carefully guarded against. We see this manifested in the people of a nation expecting the government to take the full responsibility for their welfare; we find parents unduly demanding that their children assume all responsibility for their care, or children failing to demonstrate their true individuality because of undue clinging to parental ties.
When such leaning becomes enough of a burden to be troublesome, however, we begin to look for a way out. But should we not recognize the parasitical traits in our own thinking and begin working out of them through Science, even though the leaning perhaps seems a pleasant and profitable thing? For instance, in marriage we not infrequently see a wife leaning unduly upon her husband, letting him make the decisions and assume all the responsibility, even allowing him to formulate her opinions for her. The student of Christian Science needs to be alert, when some decision has to be made or a physical claim handled, that he does not habitually lean on a practitioner. The frequently heard expression "my practitioner" may indicate a dependence on a particular person which is usually akin to leaning.
